Categories are a way to organize related pages that might not be in the same group. You can explore the existing categories from the Category page or view a list of all categories by searching for "Category/".

How to Use Categories

Categorizing Articles

Adding an article to a category is as simple as linking to that category from the article's page: putting a link to Category: Crown Duel on the Meliara Astiar page adds Meliara Astiar to the Crown Duel category. You can add the link normally, using [[Category/CategoryName]], or you can use the shorthand [[!CategoryName]]. If you want to change the display text, use the first style: [[Category/CategoryName | Display Name]] will show up as "Display Name", but [[!CategoryName | Display Name]] won't.

If you want to link to a category page without adding the current article to that category, use [[{Category/CategoryName$PageUrl}|Display Text]] instead. (Replace "CategoryName" and "DisplayText", but leave "PageUrl" the way it is.)

Category Hierarchy

Categories can also be placed into categories, which is how we get a category hierarchy that's easy to navigate. It might seem redundant to categorize the categories, but that makes it much easier to navigate between them. You can edit category pages just like regular articles, and you add them to categories the same way. Book categories should be organized by story thread, and location categories should all be added to the Places category.

Category Types

Our existing categories fall into several groups, although they aren't the only ones we could use. Others have been suggested -- see the Suggestion Box and Suggestion Box Archive -- and if there are others you think would be useful, feel free to start using them.

Stories

There are three different types of story category:

1. Book categories are for tagging actual articles. Each book has its own category, which should also contain the book's characters, settings (and maps thereof), and any object, race, magic, or culture articles that are particularly relevant. The only exception here are the duologies -- Once A Princess and Twice A Prince are both under the Sasharia en Garde category, and of course the Crown and Court Duet is subsumed under Crown Duel. Books that share their name with something else in S-d have "book" at the end of their category name: SenridBook, SartorBook
2. Series categories are for grouping book categories into units smaller than a story arc but bigger than a single book: CJ's Notebooks and the Inda Series.
3. Story Thread categories are for grouping the books according to the story arcs they cover. Each book category should be in at least one of these.

Places

Location categories include the relevant atlas, map, and culture pages, as well as characters from and stories that occur there.

Character Groups

Major character groups, especially important families, have their own categories. Groups like Characters from Remalna can be derived from other categories, so they don't need a category of their own. We're currently implementing race categories by including a link to the relevant race page in the category box: Hinder's category box includes a link to Races.Morvende, for example.

Wiki Maintenance

If you find a page that needs improvement but don't have time to fix it, add it to a maintenance category to let other editors know it needs attention. So far we have four maintenance categories:

• missing page: pages with no content
• needs synopsis: reader's guides with no synopsis
• needs expansion: pages that need more content}
• needs reorganization: poorly organized pages

Categories by Wiki Section

In general, categories are assigned to any pages that are relevant to that category. Some groups on the wiki are consistent enough that we can make a loose "checklist" for them:

• Reader's Guides should have the book's category, the place categories for each country visited, and any maintenance categories.
• Who's Who character profiles should have each of the books the character appears in, the country the character is from, the character's family if (s)he is part of an important family, and any maintenance categories.
• Atlas pages, at least for major locations, should have the relevant place category, any books that take place there, and any maintenance categories.

Categories: Guidelines